It’s a new year! There are plans in the works for Lost in Translation, some that can be announced now.
The pandemic has slowed down finding potential reviews. It’s not as easy to walk down racks of DVDs for sale at a store when the stores are closed and people are encouraged to social distance. Streaming and online shopping aren’t as useful as just browsing for the purpose of finding something interesting to review. It’s how reviews like Convoy; I found the DVD for sale at a record store.
Streaming, though, is good for finding new adaptations, whether they’re fresh from the theatres, redirected to streaming because of lockdowns, or created specifically for the streaming service. It’ll take time, mainly due to the limitations of viewing, but Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop and Disney+’s The Book of Boba Fett, Star Wars: Vision, and WandaVision are on the to-review list.
Streaming isn’t the only source of adaptations. Manos: The Hands of Fate has not one but two literary adaptations. The novels, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Manos: The Talons of Fate, both written by Stephen D. Sullivan, are on the to-read pile. Both are being treated as adaptations because of the length of time between movie and novelization.
Before tackling the Manos books, I want to finish Dr. No so that the Bond project gets going again. How best to get the project going again with the movie that started the 007 franchise? The slow down is medical; I need a new prescription for glasses. However, I am getting through the original novel. Once that’s done, I can review the movie.
The oddest review I want to do is a review of Jelle’s Marble League, a video game adaptation of Jelle’s Marble Runs’ Marble League. The Marble League, essentially the Olympics with marbles, gained a wider audience after John Oliver highlighted the sport on Last Week Tonight, leading to the show sponsoring the 2020 Marble League just in time for the pandemic. One caveat with this review, though – I backed the IndieGoGo campaign to a level where I get to be a marble in the crowd. I’ll try to keep the biases to a minimum.
There is more to 2022 than the above can possibly cover, but that should keep me busy for the first quarter of the year. Regular reviews should start next week. Thank you for your patience over the past few weeks and for reading for however long you’ve been here.
